


Client Privilege

by CopperBeech



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Bodywork, Ethical Dilemmas, Gen, Kidnapping, Mild Hurt/Comfort, massage therapy, of the sort found in massage studios anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 04:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20109325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: One of Gotham City's better respected bodyworkers has a new client and a professional dilemma.“... Why me?”“Because, dear lady, of your reputation,” he said. “People who know in this town say you’re the best. I always insist on the best.”“Okay,” I said. “Then if we’ve got a deal, you do what I tell you. And no funny stuff.”There was a choking noise from one of the strong-arm men behind me. “You are asking the extreme sacrifice,” said my client with a crestfallen expression, “but as you wish.”





	Client Privilege

**Author's Note:**

> Written thirty years ago during the Batman renaissance that occurred after the Michael Keaton film and Mark Cotta Vaz's affectionate retrospective "Tales Of The Dark Knight," but never published anywhere. A bagatelle, occasioned by someone remarking that people in my line of work would make good detectives.

I was absurdly happy for the tiny fragment of information it afforded me to follow my captors into the lift. It meant we were in a building with two, maybe three levels – it was hard to make out our speed – and that was more than I’d been able to size up about my predicament, so far. Sure, I’d been smelling water for about fifteen minutes, but around this town that doesn’t mean much. You live in a port city, you smell that every time the wind rises. Through the blindfold, it wasn’t any real help.

They’d stopped frog-marching me along by the elbow – they were as handy as I am about finding the ulnar nerve – when the smarter of the three said “Hey, Mort, stop the rough stuff. She ain’t gonna be much good to the boss if you screw her arm up.” It still tingled a bit, but it would be okay.

They’d accosted me on the corner as I walked out of my apartment building, fresh from showering after a medium-tough workout in the weight room downstairs. Usually after my morning pump I trot down the block and let one of the two or three restaurants there make me breakfast. They must have known that, because one of them drew up alongside me as I bounced along, all innocence, and extended what was unmistakably one of my cards.

“‘Scuse me miss, is this yours?”

Had I left my backpack open? As I turned he said “She’s it, Mort,” and about a dozen hands clamped down on me, or at least it seemed that way. I was in a car and the car was pulling out into traffic before I could utter a sound. I don’t know if you’d expect me to fight in that situation – I suppose I’m brave, though not crazy – but I’d just finished ninety minutes of heavy bench pressing and shoulder flyes. In the long run it keeps me strong for my work, but for an hour or so afterwards, don’t ask me to so much as wave pompoms.

They blindfolded me in the back of the car, and clapped a hat on my head, I suppose so that the blindfold wouldn’t show to passersby. It felt like a fedora. “It’s like this, Miss Bowman,” said Mort.

“Ms.,” I said. I was suddenly in a rotten mood.

“Mizz. Okay. Well, Mizz Bowman, our boss needs you to do a little work for him. He ain’t able to come to you right now, so he asked us to bring you to him. He’ll pay ya well. He understands you’re the best in town.”

“I only do outcall for steady clients,” I said.

“He’ll make it worth ya while. You don’t have a lotta choice, ya know, Mizz B. If I was you I’d go along with it.”

“Who’s your boss?” I said. 

“You’ll find out. He ain’t in a position to make appointments right now, that’s all you gotta know. He took a notion t’yer work and what he wants he gets, most times.” 

“Well, I hope to hell he’s got it clear what I do. It says there in the phone book. Massage Therapy and Sports Injuries. I’m not an escort service.”

“Oh, he knows that. He’s got whatcha might call a sports injury.”

I relaxed, a little. You can run ten ads that say therapy, receive people in a fully equipped studio with table, liniment and ice packs, and stick your certifications up on the wall, and you still get weird guys that want to whip off the towel. That’s why I see the same people every week, mostly.

“I’ve got clients this afternoon, you know. A standing appointment. They’ll wonder where I am.”

“It’s okay. They been called.”

“I don’t have anything to work with.”

“Whaddya need?”

“Well, Jesus, a table, I can’t work on the floor or any old place. I need a nice flat surface, not too wide, about hip height, sheets or a couple of towels and some oil – lotion – ”

“We’ll fix up something. Oil’s easy. Just tell me what kind.”

“You can’t go just anywhere. Try a pharmacy. Cocoa butter. No olive. It’s sticky.”

And so help me, after a few minutes they pulled over and one of them got out. After several minutes he returned and read me the label off a packet of Burrs Cocoa Butter for Scars, Dry Skin and Soothing Rubdowns.

“That’ll do it,” I said. “And if you’re shopping, stop in someplace and at least buy me an egg sandwich. You made me miss breakfast.”

They did that, too.

They took off the blindfold in the elevator. It was an unfancy lift, not likely to have met with an elevator inspector; there was just enough room for three, and it stalled for about a minute going up.

“Hey, I almost forgot,” said the smart one. “We needya to change into this. While you’re waitin’ for him. He’d appreciate it.” He extended a little shopping bag, marked with the logo of a shop I didn’t recognize.

“Dammit,” I said, “You told me this was straight. I work in the clothes I’m wearing.”

“Really, Miss Mizz, it’ll make him happy. We all like to keep him happy. It ain’t what ya think, just look.”

The light flickered back to full power at that moment and I reached into the sack. There was a common BVD shirt with a pocket, the same as I always wear to work, except that it was vivid purple. There were baggy gym pants to match, with bright green laces at the waist and ankles.

That was when I began to get the drift.

I decided the only thing left to do was behave as professionally as possible. The lift wobbled to a halt and Mort opened a hinged door, leading the way, after a two-inch drop, down a dusty hallway with a buckled floor.

“Where can I put this on?” I said.

They led me into a room whose windows had been taped over with paper and cardboard, light coming from one fluorescent ceiling fixture which buzzed horribly, most of the floor cluttered with large wooden crates. People had clearly been bunking down in here; sleeping bags were rolled against the wall and a broom stood in the corner. The floor was freshly swept, too – a weirdly prissy touch that gave me the creeps.

“Just go behind them boxes, Mizz. We won’t peek. Then ya tell us what to do here.”

The clothes fit. I wondered if they would sink my body in them.

“Have you got a table?” I said. “Something about picnic size or one of those folding things for trade shows?”

Mort looked desolate. “Nope.”

I looked around. “Well, let’s do something with those crates. Line me up a row about six feet long. Stack them up two deep and we ought to have it.”

They were used to following directions. Shortly I had a surface about hip high and maybe seven feet by two and a half. Close enough. I got them to cover it with a couple of the sleeping bags, and asked for a sheet or the closest thing to it. One of them returned a few minutes later with a large purple crushed-velvet curtain.

“It’ll have to do,” I said.

“I’m glad,” came a voice over my shoulder. “I hope you didn’t put Mort’s bedroll on top, though. I strongly suspect him of having fleas.”

I closed my eyes, then forced them open. It was a real effort to turn around.

He was standing in the doorway, stretching just about from top to bottom, though from side to side he left plenty of space even in that narrow gap. He was dressed in rumpled but clean, formerly natty clothes that had seen some hard use recently, beautifully tailored, if you didn’t mind the astounding colors. It occurred to me that anything else would look drab beside green hair. He was smiling, as we are told he always smiles, a little bit more than genially. Still, I could tell from the way he held his head that he was hurting.

I watch people walk down the street. Usually I can say good morning and then tell them exactly where the pain is. It’s a game I play. This customer had something very wrong about the left side of his neck and the attached shoulder. I couldn’t tell whether his round-shouldered posture, which brought his height down to about six-two or three, was cause, effect, or habit. Still, considering that from what I had heard in the last couple days’ news he was presumed dead, he seemed in comparatively good shape.

“I take it you’re my client,” I said, not very cordially, I’m afraid.

“Correct, madam,” he said with the sketch of a bow. “And I may say you wear my livery very well. Including my personal hat. Excuse the economy; we’ve been a bit busy.”

I rolled my eyes up at the brim of the fedora, which I had kept on for lack of anything else to do with it – as you might expect, it matched the rest of the outfit – and extended it gingerly. Mort ran between us and intercepted it. “Well," I said, "since you seem to know a lot about me, I trust you’re prepared to underwrite the extra charge for a – hm – warehouse call?” I gazed around the room, trying to guess what part of town I was in.

He laughed shrilly. “Excellent! She’ll fit right in. Here – let’s see what the cards say.” A little stiffly, he dislodged himself from the doorway, reaching into his vest to extract a poker deck which he fanned in front of me with the practiced hand of a croupier. “Pick a card, any card.”

I’d heard about the kind of things that happened to people who played card tricks with this particular gentleman, but it seemed best to get it over with. I swallowed, looked at the deck and closed my fingers on one. With a flourish he withdrew the rest, and I found myself holding a sheaf of crisp bills with large numbers on them. “Will that do, Miss Bowman?”

“God, yes,” I said frankly. “That’s two days’ pay.”

“Birdseed,” he said dismissively, picking up my hand and folding the bills into it. His skin was dry, a little warm. “You are obviously unappreciated.” 

“Tell me when I’m finished,” I said. “How do you know, anyway? Why me?”

“Because, dear lady, of your reputation,” he said. “People who know in this town say you’re the best. I always insist on the best.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then if we’ve got a deal, you do what I tell you. And no funny stuff.”

There as a choking noise from one of the strong-arm men behind me. “You are asking the extreme sacrifice,” said my client with a crestfallen expression, “but as you wish.”

That was when I knew he really was hurting.

I’ve been doing this work for years, and in that time I’ve peeled the pain and tension off a succession of overwired high-rollers, busted-up athletes, and chronic sufferers that doctors couldn’t or wouldn’t tackle. It doesn’t matter if the guy on the table usually dominates a basketball court, a board meeting or a building company. When they turn their bodies over to me, it’s my show. I decided this would be no different.

“Left neck, yes?” I said. “Upper shoulder, trouble rotating the head? Any numbness down the arm?”

“Yes, yes, yes and no.” 

“Let’s see.” I probed through the lightweight jacket, feeling him flinch a little. It always hurts in places they’d never even suspected. “Got a beauty there. Send these boys about their business and I’ll see what I can do.”

He glared at me and so did they. “Listen,” I said, “I don’t work with an audience. It’s just you and me and this neck here. They can wait outside.”

He sighed, with a crumb-brushing gesture. The plebeian spearchuckers disappeared like Tinker Bell. 

“Lose the clothes and up there under that curtain. If I didn’t get time to bring sheets it’s your own fault. I’ll watch the wall. It’s all I got.” What the hell; I figured I wasn’t likely to survive this anyway.

“Dear, dear,” he said. “You do take charge of a situation.”

“You’ve got the neck,” I said, and turned toward the papered-over window.

What I really wanted was a few moments to scope it. I’d seen as soon as I walked in that the papering was sloppy, and I tried not to look as if I were  
concentrating while I listened to the familiar rustle of garments being disposed of. A fragment of sign; a spindle of late-morning sky. If by some insane chance I made it out alive, I’d like to have an idea where I’d been, but this wasn’t much help.

“Face up,” I suggested as I heard him settle onto the crates. “Everyone and his brother goes back up. We can’t start that way the shape you’re in.”

I dragged up another medium-heavy crate to sit behind his head, noticing as I did the clothes neatly arranged on one of its fellows: a few rips and missing buttons, a cloisonne ace-of-spades tie pin, green clocked socks. I tried not to register the striped purple boxer shorts. I really think I would rather not have seen that.

I rubbed my hands over the block of cocoa oil and settled his head gingerly in a working position. The whiteness of his skin was starker with his shoulders exposed, in violent contrast to the purple curtain. “You make up like this all over?” I said. “I’m going to wreck it with the oil.”

“Please, madam,” he said in a wounded tone. “That is me.”

It was, too. I felt my way gingerly around the wried neck and shoulder girdle. It’s the most unforgiving part of this work; lots of small muscles, all on a hair trigger. When he jumped at a spot that didn’t feel tight, I peered closer under the long jaw to see a broad purple bruise going to green, a nasty abrasion in the middle. At least it fit his color scheme.

“Looks like a traumatic injury,” I said. “I’m assuming no one else has looked at it. Care to tell me how that happened?”

“An altercation,” he said. “Direct blow with a shoe heel. I was compelled to do rough water swimming directly afterward. I’m sure that compounded the felony.”

“I take it this was a couple of days ago when –“

“Batman!” he spat, drawing the tangled green brows down in an ugly frown. “What else would you expect? The intemperate wretch insists on trying to settle every issue with a show of violence. I –“

“Chill out,” I said. “I can’t do squat with you clenching your jaw like that.”

He relaxed a little and I propped his neck. Sometimes you just have to let them vent a little. “There I was, already grievously discommoded, attempting to make my way to safety along a precipitous route.” (I remembered the news story; there had been quite a manhunt on, and Batman – whom I admit I regard as a possibly dangerous nut himself, though good for selling papers – had pursued my client to a dizzy height on one of the river bridges. There had been some gunplay.) “Merely trying to defend myself and secure, if you’ll pardon the expression, my rear, I was dogged to an absurd height and –“

“What were you shooting?” I asked. There was a very tender spot right at the occiput, where the thick neck muscles taper into scalp. I wasn’t deliberately worrying it, but he knew I was there.

“Well, now that you mention it, I was. It was sheer love of brutality, though, that made him take that swinging kick at me. He loves that kind of thing. You see where he connected. And down I went.”

I worked silently a moment. “I gotta admire you,” I confessed. “The papers are saying you’re finished this time.”

He smirked slightly wider – I could feel the movement in his neck muscles. “I’m never finished,” he said. “But they can think that for a while. No one’s going to tell them anything different, now are they?”

I considered, tracing the protrusions of his dorsal processes. “No, I guess not,” I said. “Not when you put it that way. He did a job on you, if you need me to tell you. That kick gave your head a snap like a head-on car crash. Essentially you got a whiplash here.”

“Can you fix that?” he said, suddenly earnest. “How long will you need?”

“My friend,” I said, “for what you’re paying, as long as it takes.”

THE THING is, I love my work. What I’m paid for is to loosen people up, literally and figuratively, and once they’re loose, most people aren’t so bad to be around. Someone who’s acute like this one, you have to baby things along a little bit because whatever you do is going to hurt at first. You just keep letting them know you don’t want to hurt them.

I tinkered delicately with the lean, damaged neck muscles for as long as it took to start them relaxing – Wataru Ohashi, who taught one of my first classes, says “Perform this work as if you were creeping past an armed sentry,” a comparison I found disturbingly apt. After a while I shifted tack to work up the arm. The joints were marvelously elastic but you could tell the muscles had taken one mammyjammer of a jolt.

“You ever get TMJ or occipital headaches from that grin?” I said. “I get airline stewardesses complain about that.”

“Madam,” he said, not opening his eyes, “it would be painful to stop.” But he was fibbing, a little; as I worked up his arm his lips closed in a far more seraphic expression. The things you see when you don’t have a camera.

The left shoulder was rotated tightly down and in toward the midline. I see that a lot on ballplayers and swimmers. A few trigger points in the chest muscles – they were practically painted on like a schematic – got it rolling back out to rest on the table. He deflated a little all over, with a faint sigh; I knew I had him then, at least for the moment. I’d be able to do whatever I needed to.

That’s the other thing about this gig. People don’t get, really get what they pay you for unless they trust you. If you’re good you work at deserving it. Doctors and shrinks never hear the things we do; it’s not exaggerating much to say that no one has any secrets from his massage therapist. Fifteen, twenty minutes sometimes and we’re hearing about their addictions, their divorces, their psychotherapy, their kids. It stays under our hats; part of the training.

“Who is he?” mused my client as I worked from his foot up to his knee, having sedated both arms to the point that he didn’t seem interested in moving them. “Sometimes I don’t care. Sometimes I desperately crave to know. And just imagine the triumph of exposing him; I wouldn’t care if I never knew, so long as everyone else in Gotham did. It’s hard to explain.”

“How long’s it been going on?” I asked. “I’m not the newsy type, I mean I read the Courier, but the sensational stuff mainly gets into the tabloids. Scuse my saying so.”

“Oh, no offense taken. Honestly, it’s been years. I hardly keep count. One thing seems to merge into another, you know?”

I lifted his knee and rotated it through a range-of-motion. Things creaked in his hip; your whole body absorbs a wallop like that. “They said in the news that you ‘fell into the Bay after a struggle,’ No mention of him actually kicking you off the bridge. The Gazette had a photo of them trawling for the body.”

“I was watching. Inept maladroits, to a man.”

He fell silent again as I finished releasing the hip and started on his other leg. The body hair looked green too, what there was of it, sprinkled over luminous alabaster skin. All limbs, like a spider, he was a breeze after my routine crop of weightlifters and rugby players. 

The door creaked open. I used to work in a health club where people would get turned around and barge in despite the Session In Progress sign; I hate that. I glared at the spearchucker sticking his head in the doorway.

“Everything OK, boss?” he said. “It’s been awhile.”

My client mustered an effort, raising his right arm in an expansive, languid wave.

“Leave us be, Mort. We are having a lovely, relaxing time. Go pluck the fleas from your thinning hair, or trot over and get yourself a hot dog. We are busy.”

I wondered if that included me, or if he were using the imperial We. I decided not to ask. “Let’s turn you over,” I said. “I’ll hold the drape here. Roll that way.”

He rolled the other way. They always do. He giggled faintly while I disentangled the heavy plush curtain and put him to rights; it was like the Indian folktale where the girl’s sari keeps coming off and off and off until they give up trying to undress her. I hate working bad necks prone without a professional headrest, but I got as creative as I could with pillows from the cannibalized bedrolls.

“It’s just the way the man insists on violence,” he went on, picking up his earlier muse. “I keep trying to joust wits with him like a civilized man, but he does everything by main force. It compels me to keep sub-fusc bullies and bravos like Mort and Spengler there on my payroll. He’s apprehended me any number of times over the years, and every single time he’s taken a gratuitous swing at me. I can feel them all still.”

“For instance?”

“He specializes in taps to the jaw. And dragging me about by the scruff. I think it’s a mere bully’s taunt at the lightness and grace of my build.”

“Well, hell, no wonder that neck finally took its revenge,” I said. The things people put up with for years, and then they wonder why they hurt. I shook my head and got into my stride, plowing a long stroke from the heel up to the small of the back.

“My dear lady,” he said, “do you always do the – ahem – cheeks?”

“Ever get low back pain?” I asked.

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Not when I’m done with their cheeks,” I said, and went back to what I was doing. “I should give you a discount on these slats anyway. You ever eat?”

“It slips my mind at times. Things come and go in my brain so swiftly. I loathe the distraction.” 

“Much coming and going now?”

“Not a thing.”

“That’s what we’re after.”

God’s honest truth, I was kind of taking a shine to him.

I finished on his other leg and went to work on his back. This is where most of them adventure out into altered states. He wasn’t any different. He squeaked a few times as I pried things loose, but that was all. 

“Every fish in the world,” he muttered sleepily as I moved his head to one side, brushing coarse malachite-colored hair out of his eyes. I tugged gingerly, feeling things re-seat in his neck vertebrae. He jumped a little and subsided again, making noises like a retriever hound chasing cats in its sleep. I made a few passes down the length of his back and pulled the curtain back up over him.

“Over again, champ,” I said softly in his ear. “Let’s straighten out that neck.”

“I do think I’ll sleep tonight,” he sighed as he turned over, rolling himself up in the curtain like a burrito. This time I didn’t bother untangling him.

I sat there with his head in my hands for a contemplative five minutes, give or take. At the end he was breathing slowly, with the occasional suggestion of a snore. I eased my hands away. He didn’t move.

It always works that way. I figured I had a few minutes, and that was enough. I trod softly to the window and pried a corner of the cardboard up with my fingertip, buffing it against the purple shirt first to prevent a greasemark. Afternoon sunlight glinted off harbor waters in the distance. The visible half of a nearby sign said “Packing Plant.” The State House was just in sight in the distance. The nearest building stood empty, windows open on splintered darkness.

A loud snore came from the makeshift table, then a splutter. I moved back silently and quickly. Eyes still closed, he was gingerly probing his neck with his right hand.

“How’s it feel?” I asked.

“Stupendous. Madam, you are a genius. You have remade me. Everything said about you is short of the mark.”

Do I have to make like I’m modest? People say that a lot. I am good, dammit. I work at it.

I started hoping I’d live to keep getting better.

At this point I usually leave them in my studio to blunder into their clothes as groggily as they like. I didn’t relish a return call, though, so I sat him up carefully, checked the work and hit a few more hot spots.

“Ice her down if you got it,” I said. “Don’t sleep on anything too soft.”

“Madam, until I am better positioned to travel that will be a foregone conclusion.”

I left him sitting there, looking remarkably regal in the purple curtain, and stepped into the hall. “He’s fine,” I said to the smartish one, who seemed to be Spengler, and who was seated on a folding chair listening to an iPod. I looked down at my green laces. “Do I wear this home?”

“I’ll get ya stuff,” Spengler said without removing the earbuds. I sank onto his chair when he had gone inside the room, leaving me under the bemused eyes of Mort, and allowed myself a good case of the shakes. Mort, in fact, had actually gone and gotten himself a hot dog. I decided he really wasn’t very bright.

Spengler returned momentarily with my work whites over one arm. “Better leave that outfit,” he said. “We’ll look out the winda while ya change. Boss might want ya back, this way we always have it for ya.”

“God, I hope not,” I breathed. He returned to the inner sanctum while Mort, apparently to keep me away from it, stood in front of a high window at the end of the hall and gazed into the unknown below. Presently Spengler re-emerged with the blindfold. “Sorry, Miss Mizz,” he said, “but we gotta. Just stand still now.” He covered my eyes and tied a smart knot. “Oh, and the boss is real pleased. There’s a tip for ya.”

“Please, not necessary,” I said. I just wanted out of there.

“Ya earned it, Miss. He’s happier than he’s been in a couple days, and that’s easier times for us. We’d take up a collection for yourselves almost. You shouldn’t see some of the things he does when he’s tryna cheer himself up. Here.” He stuffed something in my breast pocket. “And from now on we got a business arrangement, okay? He might get somethin like this again. It’s his lifestyle, ya see? We’ll give ya notice next time, and a better vee-nue too.”

“Better my ass,” grouched Mort. “This place works fine. Why torch it?”

“Shut up, Mort,” said Spengler tiredly.

We got in the elevator. “Sounds like you got a hard job,” I said. “He must give as many headaches as he gets.”

“Well, geez, it ain’t all clover if that’s whatcha mean.”

Blind people do my work. I was kind of on a roll, and fixed two sore shoulders and a trigger finger tendinitis on my way home.

They let me off in front of my apartment. Despite the general geniality I knew I would probably be dead in about two hours if I even began to call the police. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool, trying to wash away the dusty warehouse smell. And yet – it was hard to explain – I’d sort of enjoyed it. Nothing like living on the edge, I decided.

I lay down on the roof deck when I’d swum off the adrenalin; someone had the evening news broadcasting from a boombox. A reporter was giving a flash in the tone of gravity thought to befit such things.

“…Two abandoned buildings by the North Gotham Docks are continuing to burn. Fire Department efforts have so far prevented flames from spreading onto the grounds of the nearby Western Wiener Packing Plant, and a rainstorm expected later should bring relief. Fire Chief Anthony Rizzi has gone on record with a strong suspicion of arson…”

Back at my desk I looked up a grid map of the city. It was hard to be sure. I stared at the ceiling until one in the morning, when I finally did what I tell my clients not to do, and poured a double shot of whisky. After that I slept.

I ATTACKED THE TELEPHONE at eight the next morning, on what would normally have been a day off, begging forgiveness from the clients that had been canceled and lining up as many as wanted to for times that day. About half of them could make it, and one wanted me an hour ago if it could have been done. I tucked sheets and oil in my bag and headed up the freeway. I do outcalls for the steadies.

Alfred opened the door at Wayne Manor, wearing the look of resigned and indulgent suffering that I’ve come to associate with him. “Oh, Miss Bowman,” he said. (I long ago gave up trying to break Alfred of calling me Miss.) “I’m so glad you could make it. He’s been perfectly wretched since your answering service called him yesterday, swearing and making me bring him icepacks. I do hope you’re feeling better.”

“Almost up to snuff, Alfred,” I replied. I was sure I looked convincingly dilapidated; I wasn’t used to double whiskies after bedtime.

I set up my folding table in the master bedroom. I wasn’t in the best of tempers to be here, and I sighed and tried to ignore the feeling. Wayne’s likable, but as a client he tries my patience; always breaking appointments at the eleventh hour – even when they pay you, which he always has with interest, it’s a pain – or needing an emergency time squeezed in, or without warning turning me over to his nephew or stepson or I-don't-wanna-know, who’s one of those teenaged kids who are too self-conscious to relax. He always has some atrocious mess going on with his back or neck or shoulder, and it doesn’t help that he’s built like a regional bodybuilding competitor. I bust my wrists on the bastard.

The other thing is that he never really lets go. Whatever he’s got driving him – you never know with rich people – it’s all bottled up in there. I never know what he’s thinking, or why he gets so messed up. I’ve worked for him two years and if anything, I feel like I know him less than when I started. I guess he’s the exception to the rule about people letting it all hang out. It makes me feel like the furniture. 

I stuck my head out the bedroom door, sang out “Olley olley in free,” and went back into the bathroom to scrub up. I could actually hear the limp as he came in and got up on the table. (He would keep tossing his bathrobe over the chair I put at the head of the table to work neck. I can’t get it into their heads. I have hangers all over my studio at home and they do that, or throw their things on the floor for me to trip over.)

“Morning, Mr. Wayne,” I said. “Sorry about yesterday. Something I ate did a number on me.”

“It’s good of you to work on your day off,” he said. “Alfred was going to call you a day early but I told him I’d hang on.”

“Back?” I asked.

“How’d you know?”

“Heard you walking.”

He chuckled, something he doesn’t usually do. “I know detectives who’d love to have you on the payroll.” 

He liked to say that kind of thing. I checked out his chassis in general, arriving in due time at the right leg that was obviously bothering him.

“What’s the damage this time?” I asked. “Steeplechasing again?” That was the only thing he’d ever owned up to.

“Just an overexertion,” he said. “The small of my back locks up. I knew when I did it but I just had to keep moving. I know that made it worse.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” I said. I raised his leg and flexed the hip. “Does it feel easier when I do that?”

“Yeah. Right there.” 

I lifted my knee to the table to prop his leg, so that I could dig my fingers into the muscles of the pelvic cavity just above the hipbone. “Yup. You sure did it here. Deep flexor of the hip. You training for a chorus line or fooling around with martial arts?” I’d always suspected it.

He winced, then relaxed as my fingers sank in. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“Well, whatever, you musta given it your all. Your thigh muscles are spasm city and the last time I saw a deep hip like this was on the rugby guy.”

“Let’s just say it was a tensely competitive moment in my life.”

I lifted the whole leg, playing the knee position, looking for the sweet spot where the weight goes right back into the ball-and-socket joint and the muscles get to stop clutching. Usually there’s an eerie tendency to duplicate the position the trauma occurred in. I watched his face until the slight grimace disappeared spontaneously; his leg was almost doubled with an outward rotation, like Bruce Lee taking out the villain in one of those Fists of Fury films.

I looked up at him, lying relaxed with his eyes closed.

I looked back at his leg.

I looked at his face again.

“Ah, shit,” I breathed softly.

“Is it that bad?” he asked. 

“No,” I replied. “Just something else it made me think of. Not about you at all. Sorry.”

As far as I can remember, that’s the first serious lie I’ve told since I went to the movies and swore I’d been watching my baby sister all evening long.

NOW I DON’T know what to do.

There was a playing card tucked into my door when I got home last night, with an elegantly fountain-penned superscription: “Once again, marvelous! You’ll be hearing from me. –J.” I supposed it’s superfluous to say the card was a Joker. I didn’t have any illusions about effusive gratitude. It meant he was watching me. I felt cold all night.

Someone knocked over a payroll truck up by the docks in the early hours. Took the truck and all. There was evidence that the vehicle was repainted bright green on the spot. A lot of rough-house went on.

I had a message from Alfred on the phone. He said he’d call again later.

I can’t decide.

I’m the only person around in a position to tell the Batman that the Joker’s still alive, and more or less where he’s been hiding. That’s the trouble. I don’t think the Joker entertains concepts like the benefit of the doubt. If they try to catch him again and don’t – again – I could end up smiling for a long, long time.

On the other hand, I’m also the only person around who could tell the Joker flat-out who Batman is. If he’s in the mood to know. Between that and what I’ve already got to offer, I’d probably be safe for life. I think. Even Heinrich Himmler, who was crazy as a bedbug, put up with almost anything from his masseur.

The pay ain’t hay, however you cut it.

Yeah, I could just keep my goddam mouth shut and keep them both on my schedule. But the people who taught us about client privilege in the ethics unit never got caught in a situation like this. I’d bet my life on it.

Honestly, there was something I kind of liked about the guy.

And Wayne gives me such a pain sometimes.

For the first time since I hung out my shingle in this town, I keep sitting here, looking at the phone, and hoping it doesn’t ring.

**Author's Note:**

> Re: Himmler: True. Felix Kersten, a man of Protean nationality with ties to Russia, Sweden and Holland, became known as a brilliant practitioner of "Heilkraft der Hande" during the Third Reich. He eventually gained the trust of SS Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, whose Totenkopf SS were the executors of the Final Solution, and in the process of many bodywork sessions which were apparently the only thing that could keep the rather delicate Himmler in functioning order, pried out of him successive commitments that saved lives, such as releasing Jews to Sweden. See "The Devil's Doctor," by John H. Waller, 2002.


End file.
